Value of Rotary volunteering

A special report prepared for Rotary International by the Johns Hopkins Center for Civil Society Studies estimated the value of Rotary member volunteer hours at $850 million a year.

A report by Johns Hopkins University prepared for Rotary International estimated that Rotary members provide about 47 million hours of volunteer effort a year at an estimated value of $850 million.

That Rotary members log a lot of volunteer hours should come as no surprise to anyone familiar with the organization. But a new report just released by Johns Hopkins University provides a powerful look at the impact of all those volunteer hours.

The special report prepared for Rotary International by the Johns Hopkins Center for Civil Society Studies found that Rotary members had volunteered a total of 5.8 million hours within a four-week survey period. Extrapolating those results over an entire year, the report gave a conservative estimate of nearly 47 million hours of volunteer effort generated by Rotary members in a typical year.

The report then analyzed the economic impact of all those hours and estimated the value conservatively at $850 million a year, if communities had to pay for the services that Rotary volunteers provide.

Rotary, with the help of Johns Hopkins University, is the first global service organization to conduct an empirical analysis of its volunteer’s impact using an internationally sanctioned definition of volunteer work. The authors of the report noted in their conclusion that at each stop, the analysis had chosen the most conservative estimates.

“The lesson from this report is clear: volunteer service is not only a feel-good calling – it may provide one of the more powerful, and one of the more fulfilling, avenues through which to reach the ambitious United Nations Sustainable Development Goals,” said Lester M. Salamon, director of the Johns Hopkins University Center for Civil Studies.

Rotary CEO and General Secretary John Hewko said “this is just the beginning of using the most innovative tools of measurement to capture and enhance our impact. As we better understand the vast contributions of volunteer work, we can mobilize this remarkable, but often undervalued, resource to better the world and thrive in the years to come.”

$850.00 millions
of dollars it would cost communities if they had to pay for the services Rotary volunteers provide.
47.00 millions
of volunteer hours generated by Rotary members in a typical year.

Pia Skarabis-Querfeld, a German physician and Rotary member, meets with a patient and her mother at the medical clinic she launched to support the Syrian refugee population in Berlin, Germany.
Rotary members in Brazil confer on a service project. A report by Johns Hopkins University prepared for Rotary International estimated that Rotary members provide about 47 million hours of volunteer effort a year.
Day one of a Subnational Immunization Days in Shahjahanpur, Uttar Pradesh, India, in June 2019. Rotarians, Rotaractors, health workers, and other volunteers set up and operate more than 1,500 immunization booths in the area.
Cosmos Segbefia, a member of the Rotary Club of Sekondi-Takoradi, and Derrick Ababio Kwarteng, of Global Communities, assist with the construction of a borehole in the Western Region of Ghana in 2018.